


i search for a lost sky

by novacorps



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 18:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14774708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novacorps/pseuds/novacorps
Summary: Elektra’s nine, maybe ten, when her soulmark first appears.





	i search for a lost sky

Elektra’s nine, maybe ten, when her soulmark first appears. 

It’s a small thing, bumps raised in a pattern she doesn’t understand, confined to her right shoulder. They’re bright and red and clustered, feeling like a burn or a rash. It itches so bad she wakes up, scratching at it viciously, and in the end she goes to Stick, close to tears. 

“Am I dying?” she asks, shirt pulled down so he can explore the bumps with his fingers. His calluses feel strange against them, rougher than usual. It feels….puzzled, the way his fingers run over them again and again.

“Nah, kid, you’re not dying.” He hesitates. “That’s your soulmark.”

Elektra whips around, scrambling at the hem of her shirt. She glares up at Stick. “That can’t be my soulmark. Soulmarks are  _ names _ .” Even she knows that much. 

Stick contemplates her for a moment (or at least seems to, what with those glasses he almost never takes off) then smacks her lightly upside the head. “It  _ is _ a name, girlie. In Braille.”

“Really? What does it say? Whose name is it?” Speaking just a little too fast, but she’s excited. Her soulmark. Elektra’s soulmark. The name of the person made by God or Jesus or the universe, for her and her alone. Among the Chaste, the concept is derided, of course. With the Chaste, there is only the war.

Stick pats the bed—really just a pallet, slightly raised off the ground and not at all soft—and she plops down next to him, leaning into his warmth. The halls of the Chaste’s training facility are cold in the winter. He wraps an arm around her shoulders. She can feel his bones through his skin. 

“Ellie,” he begins, voice softer than usual, “soulmarks….soulmates….they’re for other people. Not us.”

“What do you mean?” Elektra asks irritably, tilting her face up to look at him. 

He cups a side of her face. “Kid, there’s a war coming. And you, you’re our MVP. You’re already better than half the men and women we got here. You find your soulmate, fall in love, they use that against you. Use it to hurt you.” He brushes her hair away from her eyes. “You’re better than that. I  _ made _ you better than that.”

Elektra nods sharply, ducking her head to hide the sting in her eyes. He’s right, of course. He’s always right. She lifts her head and looks back up at him. She smiles, the one she keeps for him. 

“I know,” she says, leaning into him more fully. He ruffles her hair affectionately. It’s nice, so much so that she almost forgets to ask him her question. 

“Stick?” she ventures, after a few minutes of silence. “Can I know what it says anyway?” 

There must be something about the way she says it that trips him up for a moment. He breathes out, never a quite a sigh. 

“Matthew. It says Matthew.” 

Elektra runs her fingers over the bumps again. It’s a little awkward reaching them, but she manages. The raised dots, the faint heat emanating from them, warmer than her fingertips. 

“Matthew,” she repeats under her breath.  _ Matthew.  _ The name rolls off her tongue,  _ Mat-thew _ , so perfect, so  _ right _ she believes for a second that somewhere, nearby or halfway across the world, there’s someone saying her name the way she’s saying it in her head, as tender, as reverent.

The moment shatters, of course, and she remembers who she is. Elektra, Stick’s apprentice. A girl with a war to fight and no time for soulmates.

She hopes Matthew is happy anyways. 

* * *

(When Stick sends her to seduce his old student, he makes sure to say  _ Matt _ .

Later, when Matthew’s asleep, Elektra traces the lines of her name over his shoulder, exactly where his name is on her. The swoop of the L, the curve of the E. She hates Stick with everything in her. She hates herself with more.)

* * *

(And when Nobu slides the sword through her, in between her ribs, she feels her soulmark flare for a single bright second, neat rows of red braille letters turned to ravaging fire, as they fade to nothing at all. She hears Matthew scream, a dark, agonized howl, and imagines her name burning to ash as well.

He holds her while she dies, her name falling from his lips again and again and again, hot tears dripping onto her skin. She could listen to it forever, she thinks vaguely, and then she thinks nothing at all.)

* * *

( _ Easy,  _ the woman says.  _ Easy, my child.  _ But how can she be easy when she doesn’t understand anything at all?)

* * *

Elektra runs her hands over her body, brushing over old scars. Scars she doesn’t remember getting. The one in between her ribs, she decides, is the worst. The blow that killed her—no, the blow that killed who she used to be. The weak, pathetic girl who’d died. She was the Black Sky, reborn, and she would never die again. Elektra twists, glancing back over her shoulder at the burn that mars her shoulder, the other scar that haunts her, the one she feels an echo of, every time she sleeps.

She can almost make out a pattern underneath the ruined skin, places where it’s darker than the scar tissue on top, but whenever she touches it, she feels nothing but roughness, indistinguishable from the rest. But it  _ hurts _ in a way the others don’t, a phantom pain that wakes her at night, reeling with a sense of loss. 

“ I'd erase all the marks of your past, if I could,” Alexandra murmurs, stroking her shoulder, right over the mark. It fills Elektra with intense unease, feeling indescribably wrong, like something sacred is being desecrated, right in front of her.  “Your life is new. But sadly, your body is not.” 

Elektra turns to face her, angling her shoulder so it’s out of Alexandra’s reach. She points at the scar between her ribs instead. “This is how I died?”

Alexandra smiles, so warm, so affectionate. “Don’t worry about that. All that matters now is how you live.” 

“The Black Sky,” Elektra says. She almost stumbles over the words, the way they fit in her mouth, strange and awkward and wrong. “Is that all I am?”

What she wants to ask is  _ What was I before? What did I lose? What was I willing to die for? _

She has a suspicion that the answer has something to do with the scar on her shoulder, the way her heart hurts when she dreams about brown hair and scarred skin and red glasses, the way the man at Midland Circle knew her, knew her name. 

“You say that like it's not enough,” Alexandra says, and Elektra bites her tongue on the words  _ It isn’t. _

It's not enough, but it will have to be. She has nothing else. She might not remember who she is, but she knows this much:

She is Elektra, the Black Sky, Alexandra's weapon. A woman with a war to fight and no time for strange men. 

The mark on her shoulder burns anyways.

 


End file.
